BioUtah names 2023 Life Sciences Award winners at annual meeting
BioUtah recently presented its 2023 Life Sciences Awards at the Utah Life Sciences Summit, held at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City.
The annual awards recognize leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs who have made significant contributions to the state’s life sciences industry.
Recipients are:
- Lifetime Achievement: Dan Simmons, president and chief scientist at Intronex Laboratories.
The discovery of the enzyme known as COX-2 began in 1980 when Simmons started his Ph.D. work on drug metabolizing enzymes. He learned early on how to clone CDNA and genes. The actual cloning of COX-2 was done by Simmons, assisted by an undergraduate, Dan Levy, at Harvard University from 1986-89.
From 1989-1991 at Brigham Young University, Simmons, assisted by graduate student Weilin Xie and undergraduate Jeffery Chipman, did research that resulted in the identification of COX-2. The discovery formed a scientific starting point that led to the development of technology licensed by Pfizer to create the drug known as Celebrex. The discovery revolutionized the study of aspirin-like drugs and prostaglandins.
Simmons retired as a professor of biochemistry at BYU in 2017 and started Intronex Laboratories, a biotech company dedicated to finding and developing new drug targets for medical intervention.
- Executive of the Year: Mark Paul, executive director of the Center for Medical Innovation at University of Utah Health.
Paul previously was president of Stryker Neurovascular, a pioneer in the development of technologies for the treatment of hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke. For the past 16 years, he has led one of the largest neurosurgery organizations in the world.
A 32-year veteran of the less-invasive medical device industry, Paul has led organizations focused on technologies and market development for the less-invasion treatment of neurovascular, peripheral vascular and cardiology, including peripheral embolization and more.
- Entrepreneur of the Year: Andrea Mazzocchi, co-founder of Known Medicine.
Mazzocchi spent the past decade focused on cancer biology, tissue engineering and biomaterials. She co-founded and was CEO at Known Medicine, a cancer precious medicine platform that married patent-specific weblab approach and data science to generate biological, computational and clinical insights to improve cancer patient lives. Known Medicine was acquired this year by Pathos AI, where Mazzocchi serves as vice president of partnership.
- Entrepreneur of the Year: Katie-Rose Skelly, co-founder of Known Medicine.
Prior to Known Medicine, Skelly spent several years as a data scientist at Recursion, where she collaborated with their high-throughput screening team to evaluate scaleups and improvements to their platform and ensure the production of a consistent biological dataset. Known Medicine was acquired this year by Pathos AI, where Skelly serves as vice president of data platform insights.
- Innovation Impact: Civica/Dan Liljenquist, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Intermountain Healthcare and chairman of the board at Civica Rx.
Civica is a nonprofit generic drug company established to reduce chronic generic drug shortages and price-gouging. Before joining intermountain, Liljenquist served in the Utah state senate and worked on Medicaid and public-sector pension reforms. He is a former strategy consultant with Bain & Co. Inc.
- Friend of Industry: Jefferson Moss, associate commissioner of innovation and commercialization at the Utah System of Higher Education and majority whip in the Utah House of Representatives.
In his USHE role, Moss helps drive economic development and commercialization efforts across the state. He also helped build the innovation ecosystem at The Point. Moss previously he was associate vice president of central advancement at Utah Valley University and chief operating officer for the UVU Foundation. Prior to UVU, he was a wealth strategist at Key Bank and Credit Suisse and launched several businesses. He has served for seven years in the Utah House of Representatives.